Beneath Yellowstone National Park, a vast region of spectacular wilderness visited by around 3 million people annually(opens in new tab), lurks one of the largest volcanoes in the world.
The Yellowstone Caldera â the cauldron-like basin at the summit of the volcano â is so colossal that it is often called a “supervolcano,” which, according to the Natural History Museum(opens in new tab) in London, means it has the capacity to “produce a magnitude-eight eruption on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, discharging more than 1,000 cubic kilometers [240 cubic miles] of material.”
To put that into perspective, the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo in the Philippines, arguably the most powerful volcanic eruption in living memory, was rated a 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, making it, according to the Natural History Museum, “around 100 times smaller than the benchmark for a supervolcano.”
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